An Unmitigated Travesty: Goodbye Wolves

A judge has ruled in favor of the
federal government, saying precedent required him to uphold legislation
lifting endangered species protection for wolves. The ruling will allow
hunts in at least two states to go as planned this year.
U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy said in his opinion issued Wednesday
that he would have declared the legislation unconstitutional if it were
not for "binding precedent[s]" from the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals and other courts.
Ruling from Montana, where 220 wolves
will be hunted this fall according to a state quota, Molloy said, "The
law protects imperiled species, without regard to the popularity of the
animal or plant." He added that the measure passed by Congress
"sacrifices the spirit of the ESA to appease a vocal political faction,
but the wisdom of that choice is not now before this Court.”
The
Center for Biological Diversity and other groups had argued that
Congress violated the separation of powers between the executive and
legislative branches when it passed legislation delisting gray wolves.
Congress, they pointed out, only has authority to amend laws such as the
Endangered Species Act, and not previous rulings from the court. In
addition, it was the first time lawmakers, and not scientists, removed
an animal or plant from the list.
Without tackling the issue of
whether wolves had recovered fully to be hunted, government lawyers had
said lawmakers did not overstep their authority since they merely
amended the law with respect to a 2009 ruling from the Fish and Wildlife
Service that wolves had recovered enough in the Northern Rockies,
except in Wyoming.
Molloy said in his ruling, "In this case
defendants argue—unpersuasively—that Congress balanced the conflicting
public interests and policies to resolve a difficult issue. I do not see
what Congress did in the same light. Inserting environmental policy
changes into appropriations bills may be politically expedient, but it
transgresses the process envisioned by the Constitution... Nonetheless,
the case law requires me to adopt the latter interpretation."
The Interior Department removed wolves from the endangered species list
after the Republican-held House passed a bill, authored by Rep. Mike
Simpson (R-ID) and Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), in April.
The measure
was one of a number of smaller, unrelated bills attached to the 2011
defense budget approved amid intense partisanship and after several
stopgap measures were passed to fund government operations. The so
called "rider" bill was in response to a court ruling last year
relisting wolves as endangered.
The legislation covers wolves in
Idaho, Montana, and portions of Oregon, Washington and Utah. Under the
Interior Department's final rule, the five states can hunt the animal
and cull whole packs to prevent attacks on livestock and elks.
Under the law, wolves in Wyoming remain under the federal protection of
the Endangered Species Act. However, officials have announced the
transfer of 200 wolves, or two-thirds of the population living outside
Yellowstone National Park, from federal to state control. The management
plan means only 100 wolves and 10 breeding pairs outside of Yellowstone
will be protected under the Endangered Species Act.
The announcement, made the same day as Molloy's ruling, was condemned by conservationists.
“It was this attitude that led wolves to become endangered in the first
place," Suzanne Stone, spokesperson for the Defenders of Wildlife, said
in a statement.
"Granting wolves a reprieve in only a small
part of the state could severely limit their natural dispersal to prime
wolf habitat in surrounding areas," Stone added. "And sanctioning aerial
gunning and the killing of pregnant females and newborn pups is
not only a clear violation of fair-chase hunting ethics, but also a
drastic and unwarranted step that could seriously harm the
long-term viability of the population."
Wolves in the Northern
Rockies were listed as endangered in 1974 after the animals were nearly
wiped out in the lower 48 states.
The animals were re-introduced
two decades later in southern Montana, central Idaho and in Yellowstone
National Park as part of a federal recovery plan.
The Fish and
Wildlife Service believes recovery levels were reached by 2002, and it
removed wolves from the endangered list in 2009.
But a court
ruled last year that the agency had illegally delisted the animals in
Idaho and Montana but not in Wyoming, forcing the government to put the
animals back in the list. The ruling also prompted Idaho and Montana to
seek control of wolves in their jurisdiction to protect livestock and
industries such as hunting, tourism and outfitting.
In its
announcement on Wednesday, the Interior Department assured, "The
Northern Rocky Mountain wolf population is biologically recovered, with
more than 1,650 wolves and over 110 breeding pairs. It has exceeded
recovery goals for 11 consecutive years, fully occupies nearly all
suitable habitat, and has high levels of genetic diversity and gene flow
within the region’s meta-population structure. "

The film offers an abbreviated history of the relationship between wolves and people—told from the wolf’s perspective—from a time when they coexisted to an era in which people began to fear and exterminate the wolves.

The return of wolves to the northern Rocky Mountains has been called one of America’s greatest conservation stories. But wolves are facing new attacks by members of Congress who are gunning to remove Endangered Species Act protections before the species has recovered.

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Inescapably, the realization was being borne in upon my preconditioned mind that the centuries-old and universally accepted human concept of wolf character was a palpable lie... From this hour onward, I would go open-minded into the lupine world and learn to see and know the wolves, not for what they were supposed to be, but for what they actually were.

-Farley Mowat, Never Cry Wolf

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“If you look into the eyes of a wild wolf, there is something there more powerful than many humans can accept.” – Suzanne Stone